Conversations from Campus: Bible Interpretation 2

Last week I raised questions about Bible interpretation because I get these questions constantly in my travels to college campuses.

Here's what I always say first in my replies:

Don't interpret the Bible in isolation.

This statement usually rubs a few students the wrong way. They value hearing directly from God.

For them, direct communication from God bypasses the imperfections of human interpretation and ivory tower wrangling over ancient language grammar and syntax.

They value inspiration more than perspiration.

I guess I'm just enough of a mystic to believe that God still speaks directly to his people. You hear a word from God, you act on it. That's basic discipleship.

Yet, I'm really firm about this notion of interpreting Scripture (and words from God) in community. It's called the interpretive community, the historic conversation -- the sifting of scriptural meaning through the authority and wisdom of the church.

So I guess in that way I'm pretty traditional. Why?

1. Because we were made for community. That's how the Christian life is to be lived (1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12, Ephesians 4, etc.).

2. Sin extends to the understanding. Our minds are fallen.* We misunderstand people, situations -- and Scripture. Our best safeguard against misinterpretation is the wisdom of community.

I believe the God of history speaks through history -- that we as contemporary Christians rightly "stand on the shoulders" of the saints who've gone before us.

That's two millennia of interpreters. We ignore them to our peril.

* Theologians and philosophers sometimes call this the "noetic effects" of sin.
Of many good books on the subject of Bible interpretation, my favorite is How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, by Fee and Stewart.
graphic credit: http://www.turnbacktogod.com/story-what-good-does-reading-the-bible-do/

Conversations from Campus: Bible Interpretation 1

One of the questions I get most frequently in my travels is how to properly interpret the Bible.

Backup for a second.

Imagine you're 19 years old and grew up in the church. You go away to college and discover that a lot of sincere, Spirit-led people interpret the Bible different than you.

And different from each other.

This raises several questions in your mind:

1. Who's right?

2. Are there any rules or guidelines for interpreting the Bible?

3. Who makes these rules? Why should I believe them?

4. In the end, isn't up to each individual to interpret the Bible for their own life, based on how God is leading them?

With these questions and a few others in mind, you show up at a 9pm talk in your dorm lounge to hear what a traveling "apologist" (a what?) says about these matters.

He is emphatic about one main thing:

Participating in the interpretive community.

You've never heard of this. It sounds like a nature hike at a state park.

He insists that it's wrong to interpret the Bible in isolation. That you need to take part in the historic conversation that's been unfolding around the Bible for two millennia.

The interpretive community? The historic conversation?

The apologist from St. Paul, MN, is maybe a little wacky.

*********

We'll find out next week.

photo credit: Cape Disappointment, Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center
http://goo.gl/fSUu99

Conversations from Campus: Cumulative Case 4

At South Texas College a philosophy professor asked me to present Christianity to his class.

They were studying world religions and the professor, an atheist or agnostic, thought I could speak for Christianity better than he.

I asked about guidelines. "None," he said. "Just be honest about your religion."

So I had 75 minutes to present a "cumulative case" for the faith.

As noted in recent blog posts here, I began with creation and design (cosmology and teleology), then moved to the historical Jesus, the reliability and credibility of the Bible, and finally to an argument from experience.

On the white board at the front of the room I depicted each piece of the argument as a stair-step leading upward toward a certain conclusion.

I'm pretty sure the professor expected me to put the word "proof" at the top of the staircase, as if I had just proven Christianity true.

But anyone who works with proofs in philosophy or theology (or even science) knows they are very difficult to establish. I certainly had not done so in an hour and fifteen minutes.

So I made a more modest claim. I wrote the word "convincing" at the top. I said, "Many thoughtful people find the case for Christianity compelling."

Then I went on to explain how one becomes a Christian. As it turns out, several students were interested in connecting with our ministry at the college.

**********

Remember the power of the cumulative case, what theologian James Beilby calls "piecing together a series of converging arguments and evidences." *

It's the combination of lines of reason and data that can be so powerful.

*James Beilby, Thinking about Christian Apologetics, p98.
For an overall cumulative case, see Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics.

See you next week!

I'm at the InterVarsity Regional Staff Conference.

Conversations from Campus: Cumulative Case 3

Imagine a set of stair-steps moving upward, each step another "plank" in the case for Christ.

The steps build on one another -- hence the upward movement.

Step #1 last week was about origins: where the world came from, often called "cosmology."

This week's step is the design argument. It says that the order and beauty of the universe suggests an intelligent designer behind it all.

If I come upon an abandoned cabin in the woods, the most obvious explanation for its existence is an intelligent designer, a builder. The cabin exhibits what philosophers sometimes call purposive order.

Similarly, if I come upon a world that seems to exhibit purposive order, the best explanation is an intelligent designer.

In support, Christian philosophers and scientists tell us the universe is finely tuned to "life-permitting" conditions. Alvin Plantinga has estimated the odds of such fine-tuning to be 10 to the minus 100.*

I'm not really making the argument here, just telling you the direction it generally goes.

***********

In conversation, the point to made for a "cumulative case" is that beauty and order is exactly what you'd expect to find in a universe created by God. Thus step one and two interlock, -- that is, creation and design fit together and reinforce each other.

Remember that in a cumulative case it's the combination of arguments, building on one another, that give strength to the entire case.

And that is what I tried to communicate to a young atheist at Michigan State recently (see Nov 18 post).

Next week: Step 3 in the cumulative case.

*

See Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, ch 7.